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Thursday, May 19, 2011

I haven't been totally idle...

...I just haven't felt like I've had much to say on this blog. I think part of the posting slump has been because the end of the school year ate 30-40% of my raid for the last three weeks or so, and it's been really disheartening to go from progression with a stable group of good people to fishing in trade for pugs and wiping on farm content. Thankfully, last night the prodigal raiders returned, and it was completely delightful clearing content with them. Very few wipes and some great progression on Cho'gall - I am about 90% confident that we'll get him tonight. And he seems like a really farmable encounter, very repeatable once you go back with a group that already has experience with him.

I suppose it may be worthwhile to chat about playing a hunter on Cho'gall. I think that unless you're in a raid where someone else - a frost mage, maybe - has the same sort of control options available to them, you should absolutely have a Survival spec for this encounter, and I think you should have entrapment in it. The reduced cooldown on traps and the 4-second immobilize is so useful.

What we do is we have our add tank pile up the corpse-puddles as closely together as she can, then I lay a frost and an explosive trap directly on that, then a snake trap about 10-15 yards in front of those. As soon as the slimes appear they get frozen in place while all the ranged unload on them with AoEs including serpent spread, which is really phenomenal AoE DPS. Once the entrapment period ends and the slimes get off the frost patch they hit the snake trap, which immobilizes them again. Hammer them with more AoE. If you timed that first frost trap well, it should be coming off of cooldown just about now, and you should be able to chain a third entrapment proc on the slimes right at the end. If you do this well, and your raid is lined up so the slimes aren't blobbing off to the sides of the room, you should be in really great shape and they should really die by the end of the third entrapment proc.

Awesome, huh? It actually makes the encounter really fun. I mostly leave my pet on Cho'gall himself to help the melee push that phase transition into phase 2. Once we really get set with his positioning in phase 2 and kill the tentacles with a quickness, we'll be set. Yay!

Other than that, my concerns with the T12 4-pc remain the same. I'm also not looking forward to questing out Hyjal on my hunter, as I've done it in its entirety once on my warrior and about a third of it twice on my priestess. I guess I should make some gold, at least.

Other than that, I've written a few thousand words of the first novel I've started that I've felt pretty confident about finishing a first draft of. I've also been futzing with Starcraft 2 a little bit again. And I quite possibly have a new job. And with the coming of Spring I've been running again. So I suppose that all in all, things are pretty decent 'round these parts.

White Ribbon Campaign

Peregrina

I'm a casually raiding hunter living on Thorium Brotherhood-US. You can find me on the armory here or send me an email here! I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, critique your gear, or chat about vanity pets. Whatever!

Piercing Shots is all about playing a PvE hunter, with no restriction on spec or level, although I do concentrate on end-game raiding. I know all the stats and theorycraft out there can be overwhelming, so it's my goal to make it easy and more fun.